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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373576">Kicker's issues</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exostrike/pseuds/Exostrike'>Exostrike</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers (Unicron Trilogy)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, Dark, Gen, Internal Monologue, Teen Angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:35:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,275</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373576</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exostrike/pseuds/Exostrike</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Why does Kicker hate transformers so much? A slightly darker look at Kicker's character.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Kicker's issues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I was staring out at the ocean floor when I heard a transformer approaching. “Kicker, it's time for your shot,” it said, from its voice I knew it was Red Alert.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t need it. I’m feeling fine,” I said turning away from him. Instantly I grunted as my migraine sent a bolt of pain straight through my skull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re sure?” Red Alert asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine, you win!” I conceded defeat. “Let's just get it over with.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had all started when I first went to cybertron. I’d run off to hide from the transformers, back when I was simply afraid of them instead of hating them. I’d remembered Optimus Prime finding him, towering over me and I jumping back, only for the ground to give way, dropping me into a black void. For a moment I thought I was going to die. Suddenly my fall was violently halted, I opened my eyes to see ropes of energy holding me suspended in the air. The darkness below me was broken by a blinding light, a ball of energy. “So you are the one that discovered me?” a voice, seemingly ancient and otherworldly, asked seemingly coming from inside his mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who are you?” I cried out in fear. I could feel something moving behind me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I find you humans interesting creatures” the voice continued, seemingly ignoring my question. “I’m curious what kind of energy source you rely on.” The last thing I felt was things penetrating my body.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next thing I knew I was awaking in a hospital bed surrounded by my family. A bad fall was what they said had happened but I could hear them talking outside about stuff I didn’t understand. Words like dissection, DNA flaying, constitute elements, particle level reassembly. Then had come the barrage of tests to make sure I was alright, even if most of them weren’t medical focused. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then my ‘ability’ had been discovered. I had been visiting the research lab when my hair started glowing and I was rushed back to the medbay. It was discovered later that I had been standing next to an energon sample. At that point all the tests and experiments had gone into overdrive and never really stopped. I had become my father’s newest experiment.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>The door to the repair bay and medical centre slid open as Red Alert entered. He at least had the courtesy to slow down to let me keep up. “Alright kicker you know the drill. Lie down on the bed while I prep the shot,” he said, disappearing behind a control console. Silently I rolled up my sleeve and laid down on the human sized medical bed and let the transformer sized analysis tool lower over me. I could always feel the artificiality of the human parts of the city, how despite them this place was still built for transformers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The condition had developed slowly, a mild headache, muscle aches, stuff that I had been able to ignore or explain away. Then had come the migraines, diarrhea, fatigue, and spasms. Soon I was lying in a hospital bed as my internal organs shut down for no reason the doctors could fathom. I still don’t know how they discovered the cure, energon.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A mechanical arm came out from the analyser and hovered over my arm, a needle flicked out and pierced my flesh. I closed my eyes and felt the energon flow through my veins, the glow of my hair through my eyelids, my body being rejuvenated. “There, that wasn’t so bad?” Red Alert said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Easy for you to say,” I muttered as I got up off the bed. “How much did it grow?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well my latest method seems to be working. We’ve reduced the growth rate per injection to 0.5%,” Red Alert reported.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You still haven’t stopped it,” I pointed out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The mass had also been the other they had discovered during their tests. Nobody ever said what it was, they always just called it the foreign mass. Every single time I got a shot it got larger. They said it wasn’t dangerous yet they spent countless hours trying to reduce the growth rate. Injections, orally, intravenously, raw, refined and processed energon they’d tried. Still I was thankfully they’d decided that suppositories were a deadend. “Hey, it's early days. We’ve already slowed it so much,” Red Alert protested. A device next to him bleeped and he instantly silenced it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Remember transformer years aren’t human years, and what was that?” I asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh it’s nothing” Red Alert answered a bit too quickly. “Look I get this is hard on you but we’re doing what's best for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah keep telling yourself that.” I sulked out of the medical centre.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>Once I was in a quiet corridor I beat my fist against the wall. Again they kept the truth from me. Everyone was always trying to hide stuff from me. Every time I would ask for an explanation about what had happened to me on cybertron or what the mass was they could find an excuse to dodge the question or give me a hollow response. Even Dad did it to me when he bothered to look up from his computer. Did they think I was blind? That I couldn’t see what was happening to me?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>I’d pieced things together over the years as I grew up, looking at words in the dictionary and asking the right questions. Everyone thinks kids are dumb until its too late. That thing on Cybertron had done something to me, something bad, and while it had put me back together again it hadn’t fixed, replicated me 100%. Inside me was something alien and mechanical inside me that needed energon to keep me alive, and every time I get another shot of energon it gets bigger. I was going to turn into a transformer, I knew it. One of these days I was going to wake up to find my skin falling off and the cold metal face of a minicon staring at me in the mirror. With Optimus Prime ready to dock with me no doubt. Perhaps then Dad would actually take some real interest in me for once. Was this how transformers reproduce? Find organic life and slowly convert them into robots. And what’s worse is I couldn’t say any of this, they’d lock me up for being crazy, well crazier, or let the transformers accelerate my transformation. So I just rant against them in general, take every chance to do one of them down, it at least makes me feel better.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>“There you are!” a voice suddenly said. I spun around and saw Misha standing there.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Misha. What are you doing here?” I asked.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Hot Shot told me you were near the medical centre. I was thinking of heading over to the cafeteria for lunch and wanted to know if you wanted to join me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, that's a great plan,” I said, suddenly very conscious that I had been staring at her silently for several seconds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You alright?” She raised an eyebrow at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m fine, just thinking and avoiding my father.” I smiled at her as we started walking together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Probably a good thing. I hear we’ve detected energon on Titan and there was something about an expedition.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh wonderful,” I muttered as we headed towards the cafeteria. I like Misha a lot, she’s one of the few people of my age, apart from my family, around her and makes me feel almost sane. I don’t tell her about all my troubles of course. I don’t want her to worry about me, or worse think I’m mad. That’s normal right?</span>
</p>
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